


does it worry you to be alone?

by clarinetta



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Additional Characters to be added, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8144977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: "We protected each other. I miss them at times. We had great love for each other." - George Harrison
Snapshots of the Beatles looking after each other, in every form it took over the years.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is going to be a multi-chapter fic but not really linear in any way? It's going to be like a five times fic but hopefully with more than five times. I will add the necessary tags as more chapters get posted, which will hopefully be soon!

_Memphis, 1966_

-

Paul tasted blood.

Startled, he glanced down and discovered his thumb, his good one, torn open along the cuticle and seeping sluggish dark blood, smearing across the nail. He had been biting at the skin a little too vigorously (though he could not remember doing so or feeling any kind of pain) and had ripped deep, leave a small shallow hole near the tip, now lined in red like the lips of an actress. Absently, he stuck the injured thumb in his mouth and sucked.

“All right?” Ringo murmured in his low voice, uncharacteristically laced with nervous tension, from across the aisle. The four of them were crouched on the floor of an otherwise empty school bus, two to a bench seat; Paul by the window and John half into the aisle, as far from the windows as possible, with George and Ringo similarly squashed on the floor next to them. Ringo had positioned himself sitting on his feet, hunched over with his hands bracing him against the dirty floor, and he kept shifting his hips like he was cramping up. Paul nodded over John’s ducked head and drew his knees further into his chest. A screw in the wall dug coldly into his spine.

John turned his head to look at Paul, snickering a little at the sight of his friend with his thumb in his mouth, like a child. “Thought you outgrew sucking your thumb when you turned twenty-one,” John said, nudging him, but his words held no bite today, no heat. He wore the same mocking, teasing grin he always wore when he was taking the piss out of his bandmates, but there was a fragility in his expression, too, that Paul knew they must never mention out loud. Paul recalled the shock he had felt, weeks ago in Chicago, just before that horrible sham of a press conference, when John had walked out of a private meeting with Tony Barrow and Brian, his eyes red and swollen, the remains of tears still staining his flushed cheeks.

Paul took his thumb out of his mouth, freshly bloodless, and wiped it teasingly on John’s jacket. And despite their unspoken moratorium on discussing anything emotional while sober, Paul knew John needed some kind of reassurance, so he took a chance and spoke softly, barely raising his voice over the thumping and clattering of the bus. “It’ll be fine, John, you’ll see,” he said, and it was woefully, completely insufficient, but it was all he could offer. John looked at him sharply, startled, but Paul held his gaze and he quickly deflated, shoulders drooping, looking for all the world like he wanted to hide under the bench seats and never come out again.

“Tell me that again after I get shot during ‘She’s A Woman,’” he muttered.

Paul twisted his mouth into a mock-ponderous expression. “Hopefully they’ll wait until we get through 'Long Tall Sally,'” he said. “That’s my best number, you know.” It earned him a wan smile.

“So you won’t be taking the bullet for me, then?” John joked.

Paul snorted. “And get blood all over my bass? You’re mental, you are.”

It felt weak, paper thin, like they were prisoners on death row going through the motions of eating their last meal even though it couldn’t possibly matter whether they died hungry or not. But John smiled a tiny bit, a real smile no matter how small, and Paul was desperately glad for it. They all stayed quiet for the rest of the trip into downtown Memphis, all locked inside their own heads, preparing in their own individual ways. Pressed up against John on the bare floor, Paul thought he felt his friend relax slightly, letting his muscles loosen just the smallest bit, and that was good enough for Paul.

 

-

 

The first show went off without a problem. Everyone seemed a little calmer, a little more loosened up; Paul had consciously managed to keep his nails away from his teeth since the bus, and he had even shared a couple of jokes with George that hadn’t felt too forced. When they climbed the stairs to the stage for the second time, later in the evening as the setting sun painted the sky a thousand different colors, Paul even managed a genuine smile at the crowd as he shouted a greeting the over the microphone, pointing out a particularly creative sign that a fan had made and giving it a thumbs up. The crowd responded with a cheer loud enough to drown out a jet engine, and off they went on John’s count, singing their hearts out, making music that surely only God could hear.

It was during George’s number, only three songs into their act, that it all went to shit.

When Paul looked back on it later, it seemed to happen in stop-motion, much like several blinding camera flashes in succession. In the first shutterclick, a shared glance with George as he proudly belted out the lyrics to his own song, a look of fierce concentration on his young face and a sense of pride rushing through Paul. In the second shutterclick, an earsplitting blast ripping through the evening air, louder than any crowd could have been. In the third, the only coherent thoughts Paul could manage to think - _gun_ and _John_. And the final flashbulb of memory, the one that would frighten him more than any of the others, the split second after the explosion when he whipped his head to look at John, and found him standing, his eyes wide, and for that split second Paul was dead certain that his best friend had been shot and would fall at any moment.

But John continued to play uninjured, though his fingers fumbled for a trembling moment, and as the explosion echoed and faded into the night and Paul came back to himself, he realized that he hadn’t stopped playing either, nor had George or Ringo; the shock had set all of their fingers on autopilot, and he thought randomly, _I don’t even know what note I’m playing_. John met Paul’s glance and nodded, confirming that he was all right. Paul’s knees went liquid; he felt simultaneously fragile and invincible, the most frightening high he’d ever experienced. His fingers strummed with increased vigor and speed, and John and George did the same, Ringo taking off with them, more in sync with one another than they had ever been, just trying to get the damn song over with.

From then on, it was just a race to the finish. Paul couldn’t seem to play fast enough; they kicked every song into almost double time and still it seemed excruciatingly slow to Paul's panic-soaked brain. His sense of danger had caught fire, awakening some primal instinct; and that instinct thrilled through him, through all of them, hitting them one after the other like electric shocks until they were flying through the chord progressions, barely touching the frets of their guitars, the drumsticks loose and hot and vibrating in Ringo’s palms.

It seemed to take years to reach the final song. Paul screamed the lyrics at the crowd, not even bothering to stay on key in his haste to finish. Not that it would have mattered; no one could hear him anyway. When the four of them finally banged out the last note, still miraculously in sync, Paul had to resist his renewed instinct to bolt. Instead, after they stepped away from the mics, he grabbed John’s sleeve and tugged, positioning him between George and himself. Ringo came out from behind his drums and the three of them formed a rough protective triangle around John, shielding him with their bodies as they ran offstage.

It took a small eternity to reach the ambulance that was to be their getaway car. Paul risked taking his eyes off of the ambulance for just a moment, when they were close enough to the crowd to see individual faces; he looked up into the stands and was chilled to the bone by what he saw.

There were the usual tears, nameless red faces wailing with utter abandon, their screams, as usual, sounding like the end of the world. But he saw angry faces too, the faces of brainwashed zealots, some older, some younger than ten years old, not yelling _for_ them but _at_ them, their mouths open and twisted and ugly. One face in particular stood out, the face of a boy who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, his lips pulled back into an animal snarl; Paul stared at the boy, transfixed, a vision flashing through his mind that electrified him to his core. That angry, screaming face turned down, reaching for something as Paul watched, helpless. The rage in the boy's face concentrated into a focal point and transformed itself into meaningful action, locking his burning eyes on the four of them. The nameless boy raised his arm and pointed something small and black and deadly, not at Paul but at John. The gun was fused with the boy’s fingers, the handle and muzzle extending into the flesh and melding with it, as though he had been born with a gun for a hand, had been brought into the world simply to hurt, and Paul could not tell where the person ended and the gun began, where the righteous impotent fury mutated into violence. Paul saw it happen: he watched the bullet fly from the man’s gunfingers, both in slow motion and impossibly fast; he watched as it hit its mark triumphantly; he watched John tumble gracelessly to the ground, already beyond help, already gone.

Then Paul blinked and saw the back of John’s head bobbing in front of him and the vision was over, and they were still jogging toward their getaway vehicle. Again Paul turned his eyes to the crowd and found the face of the boy he had seen; he was still there and screaming furiously at them, but he had his hands up and cupped around his mouth and they possessed no weapon.

The second the ambulance door closed behind him, heavy and final, something in Paul deflated, a balloon of panic untied and let loose. He gasped for breath, unable to tell if it was the mad dash from the field or the wild rushing terror that clenched his chest with more force. John had seated himself on one of the benches, but Paul grabbed his sleeve again and pulled him to the floor, out of view of the front and back windows. John just slid down next to Paul, wordless, uncharacteristically easy to maneuver. Almost imperceptibly, John sunk lower, deeper into Paul’s side, and Paul’s arm automatically went around him, tightening a little when Paul realized that John was shaking.

Across the narrow space on the floor, George’s panic had crystallized into anger, and a stormy expression clouded his thin face. Ringo exhaled a breath that sounded like relief and despair mixed up together, and he tipped his head back against the bench and closed his eyes, his signal that he didn’t want to talk to anyone. No one spoke; not Brian or Tony up ahead of them, not the photographers who were traveling with them. No cameras were lifted, no flashbulbs went off in their faces. The only sounds were the screams of the crowd finally, mercifully fading behind them as they fled.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hamburg, 1962_

-

“I’m going to visit Astrid,” John said to no one in particular, and George looked up.

John stood in the doorway of their little shared room, his hands deep in his pockets, staring very hard at the far wall. Slipping his fingers out of place, George put his guitar aside and dragged his mind out of the music and into the present day. It was May, and warm, but John had put on his leather, and he looked near to shivering. Quickly, George looked about for Paul, but he was nowhere; he had disappeared almost immediately after their show the night before, practically leaping off the stage to get away, leaving the rest of them to clean up without him. He had been doing that often, lately, avoiding all of them, especially John, like the plague.

“I’ll come too,” George said, and John nodded as though he had been anticipating it. He waited in silence for George to slip on his boots and leather jacket, and then they set off into the late afternoon. It was a bit of a trek from their rooms to Astrid’s home; John stayed uncharacteristically quiet, barely uttering a word, and George’s mind wandered toward Stu.

Stu’s death had shocked and frightened George, the kind of fear that made him long to leave the light on at night. He had never known anyone to die before, not someone so close to his own age, and, quite unconsciously, he blamed John a little bit for dragging the Shakespearean tragedy of his life into George’s own. John, whose days were defined by the pain of losing people: first his mother, than his uncle, then his mother again, and now Stu. Though he knew it wasn’t logical, it unnerved George to be so close to John now, as though he radiated death himself. 

George had not been with the others when Astrid told them the news (and the others flatly refused to talk about it), but he could see the aftermath as clearly as debris on the tracks after a train wreck. Since George had joined them in Hamburg and their long lineup of gigs had begun, John had made himself an endless machine of chaos, drinking with utter abandon, shouting belligerently at whatever crowd had gathered to listen to them play. His antics during the shows veered toward destruction and after the shows collided headlong into it. He sneered at anyone who wore a smile, itched to take a swing at those who had the audacity to laugh. He wore his rage like armor, and his bandmates just strapped in and grimly held on for the ride. Only once had George glimpsed John’s anguish; in the dim grey light of morning, during their first week, he had woken by accident and caught John kneeling beside Paul’s bed, his hands clasped tightly together, head bowed low. As Paul slept on unaware, George had squinted at John, still confused and groggy with sleep, until John made a sloppy, inexperienced sign of the cross and George realized with a hard jolt that John was _praying_ over Paul, actually praying, though George knew for a fact he hadn’t been to church since his mother’s funeral. George squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself back to sleep, and he flatly refused to think about the incident after he woke up again. 

But it loomed heavy in his mind as they walked through the garden in front of Astrid’s home. She must have seen them coming, because she opened the door for them before John had a chance to knock. She looked pale and sunken, but somehow composed a smile as she let them in. John kissed her absently on the cheek, and George followed suit.

“Hello, boys,” Astrid said in her beautiful voice, her strong accent somehow lilting with the slight Liverpudlian accent she had picked up from them. From Stu. George shuddered inwardly. The house felt like a tomb. “How are you?”

John shrugged. “Survivin’, I s’pose.” He reached out and took Astrid’s hand. “And you?” he asked softly.

She looked down, away, anywhere but their faces. Deflating visibly, she sighed. “I think I might be dead too,” she said in a low whisper. It sent a chill skittering up George’s spine. There was a painful silence and then Astrid lifted her chin, with an inner strength George had not known she possessed, and said, “Would you like tea?” John and George nodded dumbly, and she went into her kitchen to make it while John sat on the sofa, George following, trying not to shiver.

George missed Stu, but it was a strange kind of missing. He had heard about men in the war who had lost an arm or a foot sometimes still able to feel the lost limb; that was what missing Stu was like. He could feel Stu like a phantom pain, a pressure at the back of his shoulder like eyes watching him, like a sharp rapping on his arm trying to catch his attention. Stu lingered still, like smoke; George could feel him there, in Astrid’s house. He wondered if John could feel it too, and if that was why he drank himself insane every night.

It was the most terribly uncomfortable tea that George had ever endured. No one spoke; the three of them couldn’t even look each other in the eye. Stu, despite his absence, filled the room, choking the life out of any possible conversation they might have had.

After a few minutes, John set his empty teacup on the table next to the sofa and said very softly, “Astrid, may... Can I see his studio? Please?”

Astrid nodded without speaking and stood, leading them away from the front room. John and George followed her up a narrow staircase, lined with paintings and photographs that leaned again the walls, and down a short corridor to a large room with slanted ceilings and soft light pouring in through a large window.

“Here,” she said quietly, as though she might disturb them if she spoke too loud. “He was too ill to paint very much lately. Here is the last one.” She took them to a corner of the room and showed them a canvas with colors splashed unevenly over it. George couldn’t work out what it was supposed to look like, but it seemed to affect John, who clenched his hands into tight, white-knuckled fists.

“I will leave you,” Astrid said.

“No,” John said quickly, and Astrid stopped, half turned away. “I mean,” he amended, “Will you photograph me here? Us?”

“Of course,” she said with a small, pale smile, and fetched a camera from a chair by the door.

The process was done without words; Astrid lifted her camera to her face but waited each time for John’s explicit consent. When he gave it with a bare nod, she snapped quietly, capturing John with quick, easy precision and practiced hands. George stayed out of the way and lit a cigarette, just for something to do with his hands. He felt Stu stronger than ever here, standing where he used to stand, looking out his window, seeing the sidewalks and trees and blooming flowers that he saw. Stu wrapped around the three of them until George almost felt suffocated. He knew that John could feel it too; he sunk his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and pulled it tight around himself, despite the warm spring air that choked the studio.

Presently, the clicking of the shutter slowed, and George looked up at Astrid, who was watching him. She smiled and asked with her eyes, and George nodded, going over to stand by John, who had sat himself in a chair in the middle of the room. He positioned himself slightly behind John. A strong rush of fierce love took him by surprise as he glanced down at the crown of John’s hair. He switched his cigarette into his left hand and laid his free hand on John’s shoulder. Astrid’s camera clicked and flashed.

Suddenly George felt a shudder go through John, and he looked down in concern. Astrid stopped clicking instantly. The sliver of John’s face that George could see was flushed hectic and red; George knelt beside him, worried, squeezing his shoulder gently. John struggled visibly with himself for a moment, but when Astrid knelt in front of him and took his hands, her camera forgotten on the ground, the sob finally took hold of him and wracked through his chest. He turned his face away from them and shook silently.

The brunt of it was over within moments, and John forced himself to breathe, extracting a hand from Astrid’s grip and wiping his face. But his eyes were still wet when he turned back and asked Astrid the question on his mind.

“Why can’t we go to heaven for someone else?” he asked. There was a quaver in his voice that George had never heard before. It made him seem young and infinitely vulnerable.

Astrid ran her thumbs over John’s hands. “God does not work like this,” she answered softly.

“Why not?” Another sob juddered out. George ran his hand across John’s back, unaware that he had begun to cry himself.

Astrid shook her head. “My love, I do not know,” she whispered.

“I would die for him,” John said in a strangled murmur. “He never hurt anyone in his whole life.” He leaned forward and rested his head on Astrid’s shoulder. George stood and walked over to the window. He stared unseeingly into the street and smoked until his tears stopped falling and his cigarette stopped trembling in his fingers. 

Giving the excuse that they needed to prepare for their nightly gig, they left when John managed to compose himself, needing to get away from Stu’s suffocating presence. Astrid hugged John first, then wrapped her arms around George. She pressed her mouth against George’s ear and whispered, “Watch over him, George.” He nodded into her shoulder, making the promise both to her and to himself, and gave her one more squeeze before letting go.

And though he hadn’t ever been religious and he wasn’t sure about God at all, he knelt that night beside John’s bed after everyone had gone to sleep, crossed himself, and began to pray.


	3. Chapter 3

John was worried.

It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling for him. Despite his constant projected hardness and nonchalance, he knew, inwardly, that he was emotional person. He could go from furious to despondent to cheerful in the space of an hour and not blink. That was just his nature, to move between feelings at an almost breakneck speed; he was fine with it. He rolled easily with his own emotional punches whereas someone with a more stable frame of mind might be left reeling and insane.

“Worried,” however, was a mostly new sensation, especially when it came to the object of his concern. James Paul McCartney had never given John much cause for worry before; he was self-contained, emotionally stable, gracious, and polite. He was loyal to his loved ones and consistent in both habit and manner. Once, for his own amusement, John had timed Paul’s morning routine for a week and discovered that Paul’s process lasted precisely thirty-six minutes, every day, give or take an occasional ten seconds. And he fidgeted almost constantly, nipping at his fingernails and bouncing his knees and writing down snatches of lyrics and doodling cartoon faces, often all at the same time.

So it was only natural that John felt himself instantly unnerved that biting November morning when, upon stepping out of the hotel bathroom, he found Paul sitting on the edge of his bed, only half dressed, exhausted and rumpled and utterly, completely still.

“All right?” John asked casually as he rubbed at his hair with the hotel’s scratchy towel. Silence. He had buttoned up his shirt most of the way before realizing that Paul hadn’t stayed quiet because he was angry at John for some reason; he appeared not to have heard the question at all. His eyes were unfocused, and had the quality of a thousand yard stare that made John feel uneasy. The Germans had an old word for it, that look that they would always get during the sickening comedown from the prellies - they called it _goaßgschau_ , the stare of a goat. Annoyed, burying the prickle of concern at the back of his neck, John walked over and snapped his fingers in front of Paul’s face. Paul jerked back as though he had been slapped, his noise of surprise quickly morphing into a brutal coughing fit.

“ _What?_ ” he said when the coughing finally subsided.

John shrugged and gave Paul a cheeky grin. But instead of responding with exasperated affection, like he usually did, Paul turned away and muttered, “Sorry. Headache.”

“You hung over?”

Paul scoffed. “I had _one_ Scotch and Coke last night.”

“Well, I always knew you had the alcohol tolerance of a ten year old girl, Macca.” Paul made a face at John, but John could tell his heart wasn’t in it. John resolved to keep an eye on him. They had a show tonight, after all, he reasoned, and they needed Paul to at least be awake.

The first set of interviews were being held in a concert hall across town, and Paul seemed to curl into himself during the short ride there. John sat next to him and quickly realized that he was shivering, with tiny, almost unnoticeable tremors, despite the stuffy artificial heat that suffocated the cabin of the car. John pretended to brush a piece of fuzz from Paul’s fringe to surreptitiously feel his forehead; his skin, paler than usual, felt dangerously warm to the touch. When they reached the hall, Paul folded himself into the back of the group, not speaking unless directly spoken to by the reporters. Even then he gave only short, hoarse answers before graciously deflecting back to the others, especially George, who, thankfully, was in a particularly chatty mood.

During the drive to the next set of photo shoots and interviews, Paul actually fell asleep with his head on Ringo’s shoulder, mouth hanging open, snoring a little, and that was when John really started to worry. Ringo kept darting little glances and looks at John, almost in an “are you seeing this?” gesture, and lowered his voice while chatting with George to keep from waking Paul. It didn’t matter; Paul was knocked dead out like it was the middle of the night, looking frighteningly lifeless, and he had to be shaken awake when they reached their destination. The short nap seemed to do him a little good; he looked a bit more lively for the photo shoot and talked a little more to this batch of reporters, and John relaxed fractionally.

But his second wind didn’t last long. By the last interview before the show, even George had noticed Paul’s lethargy, squinting at him every time he smothered another cough. Paul had thrown his coat back on and was shivering again, and he looked wan and diminished, almost transparent. During the interview, John noticed that Paul couldn’t even focus on the reporter; he constantly flicked his eyes away, nervous, searching for possible exits. John couldn’t help asking once, when Paul looked seriously ready to either faint or bolt, if he was all right. Of course, Paul managed to paint on a smile and said that he was fine. But that moment made the decision for John: they would not be going on that night, not if he could help it.

Finally, the reporter’s time was up and they were bustled into their dressing room to eat supper and rest for a few hours before the show. Immediately Paul reached for the arm of the nearest chair and lowered himself into it, out of breath, coughing like it was going out of style.

Dropping all pretense, John knelt on the floor in front of Paul and brushed back his hair to feel his forehead, first with his palm, then with the backs of his fingers, just like Auntie Mimi used to do. Paul’s skin was aflame, as hot and dry as the desert.

“Am I dying?” Paul asked in a hoarse whisper, attempting a weak smile.

“’Fraid so, luv,” John announced. “Any last words?”

Paul opened his mouth, but instead of profound words, another string of painful coughing let loose.

“Don’t worry, son,” George said, patting his back. “We’ll think of something. Some real, proper deep last words, like.”

Keeping a hand on Paul’s arm, John stood up and met Ringo’s eye across the room, where he was filling up a glass of water for Paul. Ringo jerked his head minutely toward the door. He raised one eyebrow questioningly: _You or me?_ he seemed to ask. John nodded in confirmation. _I’ll do it._ Then he headed out the door to find Brian, deftly dodging the few fans who had managed to get backstage.

He found their manager by the sound of his smooth posh voice, not far down the hall. He was chatting lightly with someone, John didn’t care who; he stepped directly in between the two men and faced Brian, who looked perturbed but not particularly surprised at the sudden intrusion.

“John, hello,” Brian said, only the smallest flutter detectable in his voice. “This is Joseph -”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” John said shortly. “We need to cancel the show.”

Brian’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He looked past John, to Joseph Whoever, and said, icily polite,”Would you excuse us for a moment?”

When he was gone, Brian turned back to John, flushed but determined. “Now, John, you know that’s not possible.”

“Postpone it, then,” John said. “Paul can’t go on.”

“Nonsense,” Brian scoffed.

“He can hardly stand up straight!” John growled.

“Now, don’t exaggerate, John,” Brian said in that placating, calming voice that John so hated. “I’m sure he’s fine. He likely just needs some food -”

“Listen, _Bri_ ,” John sneered, “I know you’re too obsessed with me to see past the end of your own nose most of the time, but surely you must have noticed that he’s ill.”

Brian flushed an even deeper red at the barb, and John crowed inwardly in triumph. Sometimes, he knew, Brian just needed a little pushing around, and John had hit him in just the right spot. The show was as good as cancelled already. “Go find the organizers before I make a scene,” John said nonchalantly, and turned and strolled toward the dressing room without looking back.

He had only been gone for a minute or two, but already Paul had curled up in the chair, his eyes drooping closed again. George had thrown his big leather coat over him, and Paul was tugging at the collar and tucking it up under his chin. He looked utterly miserable. A warm wave of protective affection washed through John, and he sat down in the chair next to Paul’s.

“Keep your boots on, son,” he said. “We’re going back to the room.”

Paul dragged his eyes open. “Eh?” he said, confused.

“It’s the strangest thing,” John replied, pretending to be thoughtful. “All the girls suddenly decided they didn’t want to stare at your ugly face all night. Bizarre, that, really.”

Paul shook his head. “We can’t cancel,” he protested. “I’m all right.”

John waved his hand. “It’s already done. Brian’s fixing it. You wouldn’t want to make any of the girls sick by forcing them to look at you, would ya now?”

Paul gave up, deflating quickly, a testament to how ill he really was. “No, I suppose not,” he mumbled. Ringo pulled out a pack of cards, and they played listlessly while Paul watched without much interest. George lit a cigarette, but hurriedly put it out when the smoke made Paul cough.

It didn’t take long before Brian knocked on the door and walked in, his face composed and neutral and satisfied with a job well done. “The show has been rescheduled for December,” he said, talking mostly to John. “The car is ready to take us back to the hotel, so if you wouldn’t mind, we don’t want to keep the driver waiting.” He gestured toward the door.

Brian had made their departure as easy as possible, leading them away from the majority of the throngs of fans, but nothing could have kept the reporters and photographers from noticing that the Beatles were walking away from the stage, not toward it. With every camera flash, Paul winced, ducking his head further. Finally, John just stepped in front of him, his hands in his coat pockets, and shielded Paul as Mal strong-armed a path to the car for them. Reporters shouted and more cameras flashed, but John barely heard them. They clamored into the car, all four of them squeezed into the bench seat in the back, and Ringo slammed the door. It was blessedly quiet inside the cabin, and Paul uttered an audible sigh of relief, slumping into John bonelessly. Without thinking, John laid his arm around Paul’s shoulders.

“Thanks,” Paul muttered. John didn’t answer, pretended he hadn’t heard, but when no one was looking, he planted a lightning fast, feather light kiss on Paul’s forehead.


	4. Chapter 4

“Nervous?”

George’s voice made Ringo jump, and he whirled around to meet George’s wry smile, tinted with just a little concern.

“Nah,” Ringo said, chucking George on the shoulder.

But he was, for some inexplicable reason. He had been on stage virtually every day for the past five years; it wasn’t that he was green in any way. Being on stage had always felt natural to him, like stepping into his family’s kitchen and smelling his mother’s coffee. And it certainly wasn’t the first time he had played with the Beatles. Their old drummer, Pete, had missed enough gigs in Hamburg to start annoying them, and Ringo had offered to step in many times, just for the fun of it, just because he liked them. He never could sleep anyway, and he loved playing so much that it didn’t matter who he played with, as long as he had his sticks in his hands.

He had to admit that playing with the Beatles was a rush unlike anything he had ever felt with Rory. There was something exhilarating and magical that would happen the moment Paul counted them in. That magic, that rush, was what had prompted Ringo to say yes when John and Paul had shown up at Butlins with their proposal.

But it was his first time on stages as an official Beatle rather than a Hurricane or a fill-in, and he was a little worried about the crowd at the Cavern. The Beatles were one of the most popular groups in Liverpool, and their fans had already heard about Pete getting ousted. He had seen other popular bands change members, and had seen those new members run out on a rail. The Cavern crowd was loyal, and Ringo was an outsider.

George shrugged at Ringo’s feigned nonchalance. “John and Paul are.”

Ringo was surprised. “Eh?”

George nodded. “Aye. They were snipping at each other like girls.”

Ringo had seen them argue before; he knew it could get nasty very quickly. Of course friends fight all the time; but it always felt different with them. More intense, with more at stake. “What is the matter with them?” Ringo asked before he could stop himself. He regretted the question immediately, but George took the question in stride, as though he’d gotten it many times before. He looked darkly at Ringo from under his heavy brow. Ringo thought he might be working himself up to confide something, some secret that had been rotting inside him, but instead he shut his mouth with a click and sighed.

“They’re complicated,” he said quietly, and Ringo knew he wouldn’t say anything else about the subject for the time being.

A few short moments later, John came bounding up to them, his eyes alight with the fire that performing could give him. “Ready, lads?” he said, and they were off.

-

Twenty minutes into their set and the screaming started to become annoying. Not the girls cheering for them, that was lovely; it was the Pete Best fans. They refused to back down. When George and John turned up their amps, the fans shouted louder, lewder insults. Paul could usually tune out any hecklers, but even he seemed less charming and more strained than usual. In an uncharacteristic display of kindness, when the heckles reached a fever pitch, John turned and gave Ringo a sympathetic smile and a wink. Once, George shouted at a group of hecklers near the stage to “shut yer yaps,” which made Ringo chuckle. 

Eventually, their set ended, and they dispersed to clean up their equipment, pointing out a table to meet at when they were finished. Ringo packed up his drum kit, humming to himself, tired but satisfied. It hadn’t been too terrible; George, John, and Paul had his back, and he figured that was all he needed. He met John and Paul at the table and ordered a round of beer for everyone, which John and Paul applauded.

When the beer arrived but George didn’t, Ringo said he’d go find him, and made his way out the back door of the Cavern, to the alley where they had parked Neil’s van. It had been George’s turn to load the equipment into the back. Ringo started to worry when he didn’t see anyone in the alley, but then he spotted someone huddled on the ground near the back of the van, unmoving, holding his head. When Ringo stepped closer, he saw that it was George.

“What happened, Georgie?” Ringo asked as he knelt down by his friend. “Did ya hit yourself with the van door again?” He tried to make light of the situation, but he had been raised in the Dingle, and he knew what had happened before George said anything.

“Fuckin’ cunts grabbed me on me way back in,” he muttered, still keeping his hand over his face.

“The ones heckling us up front?” George nodded. “Let me see,” Ringo said. George lowered his hand, and Ringo whistled lowly. There was a massive dark bruise forming under his left eye, a tiny cut in the middle of it, slowly oozing blood. He moved his shoulder gingerly, too, trying to rotate the pain out of it. “Hope you gave as good as you got, son,” Ringo said lightly, though a storm was taking shape in his mind. He took George’s hand and pulled him up.

“Scratched one of ‘em across the eye,” George said.

Ringo smiled and hung his arm around George’s shoulders. “That’s my boy,” he said. His smile felt stony and cold.

-

Ringo spotted the heckler with the scratch at their next show. George had gotten him good; the scratch looked deep, and it went from his ugly hooked nose almost to his hairline. It made him look tough, but Ringo recognized the type instantly - he was a wannabe Ted, always wanting to seem hard, but only willing to fight anyone who looked weaker than himself. A coward. Ringo kept one eye on him all evening.

After their set ended, Ringo offered to put everyone’s equipment away, and they all cheered, promising him free beer when he was finished. As he packed up, he made sure to catch the heckler’s eye and jerk his head minutely toward the alley. The heckler’s eyes narrowed, but Ringo deliberately turned away to continue his job, zipping Paul’s bass into its carrier.

As soon as he got out the door, he hurriedly put the guitars he was holding in the back of Neil’s van and pressed himself against the wall by the back door of the Cavern. Sure enough, the heckler was as stupid as he was cowardly; not thirty seconds later, he stepped out the door, alone and blinking slowly, standing still while his eyes tried to adjust from the Cavern light to the darkness of the alley. Ringo had never been big, and both his childhood illnesses had left him even scrawnier than before, but he did have one advantage: he was small, and therefore he was fast.

Before the heckler, who had at least half a foot and two stone on him, had even realized Ringo was there, Ringo had grabbed him by the collar and whipped him at the wall, making his head bounce against the slimy brick. He held the man with one hand, and his other hand pressed the pocketknife that he’d brought that night up to the man’s neck, pushing very gently just under his chin. When the heckler realized what was happening, his eyes went wide and he opened his mouth. Ringo pressed the knife tip into the underside of his jawline just a bit harder, and the man snapped his mouth shut again.

“Touch my friend again, and I’ll give you a scratch across your other eye to match,” Ringo said quietly. The heckler nodded quickly, desperately trying to pull away from the cold knifepoint. Now that Ringo could see him up close, he looked more boy than man, young and frightened and unable to fight back or make a sound. Suddenly, Ringo felt sick. He knew better than this. He stepped back, lowering the knife. “Get out of here,” he said, and the boy hightailed it. Before he reached the mouth of the alley, though, Ringo shouted for him to stop. “Hey!” The boy stopped and turned, fearful, but Ringo just indicated the scratch on his face. “Peroxide,” he called. “Don’t want it to get infected.” The boy nodded, unsure, and then turned again and fled.

Slowly, Ringo finished packing everything into the van. His stepfather had always tried to teach him kindness and gentleness, but when he saw that bruise blooming on George’s face, the violence of the Dingle had gotten the best of him. George had defended him and gotten hurt for his trouble; Ringo just wanted to protect his friends.

He made a decision that night. There would be no more violence coming from him. No matter what happened, no matter how angry he got or who hurt him or his friends, he would never use the knife again. He would learn to protect them in other ways.

He slammed the van door closed, and it felt like the beginning of something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely embellished, by the way. I very much doubt Ringo was ever violent like this. I just wanted to challenge the idea that he has always been the "peace and love" guy, to point out that the Dingle had to have had some effect on him.


	5. Chapter 5

_L.A., 1980_

“Hello?”

Ringo wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with food in your mouth?” A risky joke if he’d caught Paul in the wrong mood, but Ringo, as usual, had guessed right. Paul snorted and chewed loudly into the phone, crunching hard on purpose, and Ringo pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment, smiling even as he feigned disgust.

“Think she died before she got to that particular lesson,” he said. Something warm and familiar settled in Ringo’s chest, a faint click he could almost hear, if he tuned in: the snick of a well-worn lock, a door opening, the comforting hum of your own home after a long absence.

“Tosser,” he said.

“Wanker,” Paul threw back.

“Yeah,” Ringo said, “But at least I’m handsome.”

“The prettiest of us all,” Paul assured him. There was a small silence, but Paul had never been content to let silence stretch and said: “All right, Ritch?”

“Aye, yourself?”

“It’s getting better all the time,” Paul said brightly.

 _But I never could read your mind,_ sang John in Ringo’s thoughts, and sadness whispered a cold chill over Ringo’s skin. He didn’t want to think of John with his tangle of hurts and sharp language, sweet one minute and terrible the next. He reached for the whiskey he’d poured himself before calling, the glass already mostly empty, and drained the rest of it in one burning swallow. The chill receded, replaced by artificial warmth. John’s face faded from his mind. Exhaling harshly, he turned and reached for the bottle again.

“You working on anything new?” Paul asked, catching Ringo by surprise.

“Actually, yeah.” Paul made a sound of approval. “Or, I’m thinking about starting something new,” Ringo corrected. He took a breath, steeling himself. “Another album. I’ve got some ideas, anyway. That’s why I called. Thought you might come down for a few weeks.”

“Did you?” Paul said lightly, but Ringo heard the underlying interest and excitement bubbling up over his nonchalant words. “Might do. Could show you a thing or two about bass playing.”

Relief weakened Ringo’s knees a fraction. (Why did it have to be so hard to ask his oldest friends to work with him? Sometimes he saw their past and their fractured present side by side, like photos in a scrapbook, and couldn’t understand how they had gotten from one to the other.) After a long beat of silence, knowing Paul expected a friendly jab in return but wrongfooted by Paul’s quick acquiescence, he simply said, “I’ve got me drums.”

Paul hesitated, and Ringo winced with the knowledge that he’d gone off-script. But Paul had always been quick, smoothing over awkward moments with reporters and friends alike all his life, and he rose to the occasion again: “When do we start?”

Ringo laughed, glad to be on solid ground. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” he teased. “I’ve got a full schedule for a while. Like as not, we’ll start rehearsals come summer.”

“I’ll start tuning me bass,” Paul said happily. “Who else have you nicked?”

Ringo ran through his short list of names, Paul humming with approval or distaste at every one. He made his own suggestions, which Ringo allowed with a smile; but when he said George’s name, Paul went silent.

“Paul?”

“He won’t come.” Paul’s voice had gone flat, all the humor leeched out.

“Eh?”

“Not if I’m there.” A memory twanged in Ringo’s mind like a bad chord, something nasty that George had said to the press about never playing with Paul again. He sighed; he wanted to believe that George could get past whatever anger he still clung to, but the truth was, he could hold a grudge harder and longer than anyone Ringo knew.

Still, he scoffed and said, “Let me handle Georgie.”

“What about John?”

Ringo was expecting the question, but not the naked hope bleeding through the telephone line, simmering under the practiced nonchalance. “What, and drive the press barmy with rumors?” he said lightly.

“Could be fun, y’know.” Hope again, seeping from his words like blood through cloth.

“Haven’t called him yet. I don’t know if…” He trailed off, unsure of how to finish.

_I don’t know if that’s a good idea._

_I don’t know if Yoko will let me talk to him._

_I don’t know if he will_ want _Yoko to let me talk to him._

_I don’t know if he will come, if he knows you’ll be there._

Paul cut off Ringo’s train of thought before he could speak again. “Eh, you’re right. Nevermind. He’s probably tied up with Yoko and Sean, anyroad.”

“Aye,” Ringo said distractedly. “Well. I’ll ask. He’ll be insulted if I don’t, you know John.”

There was a hesitation, so short that Ringo almost missed it, before Paul hummed noncommittally. Just like that, Ringo was shut out.

“Paul--”

“I’ve got to go, Rings, Linda needs me in the kitchen.” Ringo wanted to reach through the phone and shake Paul.

“Give her my love,” was all he said.

“Cheers, Ritch. I’ll call you later.”

Ringo sighed and hung up. Then, before he lost his nerve, he picked up the phone again and dialed.

“Ono-Lennon residence.”

Yoko’s voice, deceptively soft, drifted through the receiver. Ringo pasted on a smile. Through the haze of whiskey, he could almost pretend it was genuine.

They exchanged their customary pleasantries, a familiar dance by now. Ringo asked after Sean; Yoko sent her love to Ringo’s kids. Yoko commented on the weather, the position of the moon and Saturn, leading the two-step, and Ringo followed and hummed courteously. They performed this polite fox trot every time he called, and eventually Yoko curtsied - “I’ll find John, he’ll be glad to talk to you” - and finished the dance, walking away without waiting for a response.

“Ringo, old chap! Fine lad, dear boy!” John’s voice boomed in Ringo’s ear, the affectation making Ringo chuckle. “So _very_ glad to hear from you!”

“Hello, John,” Ringo said simply.

John dropped the silly accent, but his quiet giggle rang out over the line. Ringo’s spirits lifted instantly. Soon they were laughing like children, pulling impressions and accents more and more ridiculous as the call went on. When John was in a good mood, he could make Ringo feel fifteen years younger, smoking a blunt for the first time, his long hair ghosting along the back of his neck.

Eventually Ringo asked how _Double Fantasy_ was getting on. John scoffed dismissively to indicate what he thought of the mostly-lukewarm reviews it had been getting. “They just don’t get it, man,” he complained.

“You’re too good for them, you know,” Ringo said encouragingly. John hmphed. “Speaking of records, I’ve got one in the works meself.”

“Oh aye!” John said with interest. “When do we start?”

“Summer, most like. As soon as I can get Georgie on board.”

“No.”

“Come off it, John, you’re not still upset about _I Me Mine_ , are you?”

“Wouldn’t you be? Not one word, Ritch!”

“I know, son, but I need his slide guitar.”

“Get someone else!”

“Your album now, is it?” Ringo challenged, sloshed enough to be confrontational.

“Oh, all right,” John grumped. “Have it your way.”

“I will, thanks.”

“Have you invited Paul?”

Ringo shook his head, grinning to himself. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, after all this long time, at John and Paul both asking after each other. They were like magnets, those two, trembling at the restraints that held them apart, desperate to connect again. “I have, yeah. He’ll be there.”

“Oh, good!”

Ringo raised one eyebrow. “All right with Paul but not George? The world must be ending.”

“Are you joking?” John’s voice bubbled with the same excitement Ringo had heard in Paul’s, just an hour ago, identical hope trickling through the cracks. “I’ve been dying to ask him, I just can’t get up the nerve!” He paused, then said, his voice almost shy, “I miss that bugger, you know.”

“Sure you’re ready for the press to get a hold of this?”

“Sod them, the whole lot of them,” John said cheerily. “Don’t tell them, don’t tell anyone. It’ll be a surprise.”

Ringo grinned. “I’m sure it will be, at that.”

 

\--

 

Two weeks later, John was dead.

 

\--

 

The John-less world kept turning. Ringo flew to New York to see Yoko and Sean. He listened sympathetically to George talk for hours about tightening the security at Friar Park, pretending he couldn’t hear the tremble in George’s normally smooth baritone. He spoke briefly with Linda and set up recording sessions at Montserrat with Paul. He helped Barbara plan the wedding, busied himself with guest lists and table arrangements. He emptied more bottles of liquor than he could stand to count.

The winter dragged on; he would remember it later in flashes of darkroom red, tinted with anger and an all-encompassing helplessness. Staying with Paul at Montserrat that February felt like living in a haunted house. The spectre of John followed them day and night, a ghoulish shadow, and the weight of it lay heavy on both of their backs. They rode their instruments hard and rode the bottle harder to keep the memories from creeping in. Most of the time, it worked.

Then, one night, it didn’t.

“Richard,” Paul slurred. He had slumped into a chair at the head of the dinner table around ten p.m., grabbed the bottle Ringo had already been working on, and hadn’t stopped. Linda had long since gone to bed, taking the kids with her. The clock above the mantelpiece said five past midnight, February 2nd. _Fifty-four days since you’ve been gone,_ Ringo thought dully, unaware that he’d spoken aloud.

“Wha?”

“Fifty-four days. Since.” Ringo enunciated each syllable.

“Yeah,” Paul said tonelessly. “Hey, Ritch. Hey.” He dropped his hand on the table to get Ringo’s attention, and the rest of his body slouched forward with the momentum.

“Eh. What.”

“If...” Paul furrowed his brow, trying to put his words in the right order. “If it had been me. Ritch, if it had been me, would he even care?”

Ringo stared at Paul for an endless moment; Paul stared back, guileless. And then Ringo surprised himself by bursting into tears.

Paul made a distressed noise and stumbled out of his chair. Ringo threw his hand out, a very clear _stay back_ motion, but Paul crashed to his knees at Ringo’s feet in supplication. Covering his face with his hands, Ringo tried to ignore Paul’s mournful apologies and just breathe. He had thought there were no more tears left in him.

When he caught his breath, he looked down at Paul, still kneeling brokenly on the floor. Ringo slid from his chair and knelt on the hard linoleum as well, close enough to see Paul’s lip tremble before he trapped his thumbnail between his teeth. “Look at me,” Ringo said. Paul did, with the obedience and trust of a child. Sighing shakily, Ringo took Paul’s hand away from his mouth and held it, took Paul’s other hand and held it too.

“I know,” Ringo started. Swallowed, brushed the newly fallen tears away with his elbow, and started again. “There’s nothing I can say. I know that, y’know. I can’t make you believe that he cared, any more than I can make it stop hurting that he’s gone.” Paul looked down, his throat working over and over. He sniffled quietly.

A memory broke through the haze then, something that felt like a million years ago, lost among the grief of the past two months. “He missed you something fierce,” Ringo said, gently tugging on Paul’s fingers. “He told me. We were all gonna do my album in the summer, and he wanted to surprise you.” When Paul looked up, there were tears trembling on the edge of his lashes. “He loved you,” Ringo rasped. He let his own tears fall unchecked now. “He wanted to play with you again.”

“Then _why didn’t he?_ ” Paul shouted, the sudden volume making Ringo flinch hard. His outburst echoed through the house, and Ringo reached out and wrapped his arms around Paul’s shoulders. After that burst of energy, all the fight went out of Paul and he slumped in Ringo’s arms, his shoulders jerking with silent sobs. Ringo held him until he felt a soft touch on his shoulder: Linda, her hair sleep-mussed and her bathrobe hanging crooked on her frame.

“I’ve got him,” she whispered. “Come on, Paul, love.” Ringo nudged Paul and offered support so that he could stand, and watched helplessly as Linda and Paul disappeared into their bedroom. He looked at the bottles and empty glasses strewn over the table. Then he left everything where it was, walked upstairs, crawled into his guest bed, and cried himself to sleep.

Morning came much too early, and with it a raging headache that refused to let Ringo sleep in. Grudgingly, he got up and stomped to the kitchen, where Linda had already brewed a pot of tea and was sitting at the table, drinking her own steaming cup.

“Tea’s still hot,” she said unnecessarily.

“Ta.”

He poured himself a cup and sat down across from her, taking her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Ringo said miserably. “Is he all right? I shouldn’t have, I thought it would make him feel better, but I put me foot in it -”

“Hey,” she interrupted. She covered his hand with her other hand and smiled gently. “Hush now. I don’t know what you said, but it’s all right. Last night was the first night since it happened that he hasn’t had nightmares.” Her hands tightened around his, long fingers stroking his stubby ones. “He’ll be all right. Not for a while. But he will be.”

“I hope so,” he murmured. 

She met Ringo’s eyes. “And you will be, too,” she said with quiet strength. He felt the weight on his back lessen infinitesimally. And for the first time in this new, colder, John-less world, he believed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of thanks to pivoinesque and savageandwise for listening to me bitch about this chapter for umpteen days and being patient with my lame ass. <3


End file.
